Some people leave footprints on our heart.
Cats leave fur on our sweaters.
Dogs leave drool on our shoes.
Families will crap on our doorstep.
So when life gives you crap, garden it and make roses.

Saturday, March 03, 2012

And Galah of the Year goes to........

What a day was yesterday.I lost my blog identity. Piss off Google+ and the Chrome you've been sniffing.I was credit card scammed over the phone.Then there was the burial plot/funeral insurance scam in the morning.And in the afternoon they tried for the Centrelink pension scam again.

Antikva did her best but could only assume I bonked some button that connected blogger with google and deleted myself. I was a non-blogger for a day and almost had a melt down. I had a blog post to put up. I sent off 3 emails to Blogger, put Googlechrome in the sin bin, IE8 is my browser and google is default search.I managed to get the blog page up but couldn't access dashboard so I clicked on create blog up in the corner and sneakily crawled in the back way to old dashboard and took up their invite to new dashboard. I was back, did the post and fingers crossed it was up but I still couldn't access half the blogs until late last night when Me was restored to JahTeh.

In the meantime I had told the funeral insurance/burial plot seller to piss off as I felt I already had one foot in the grave.

Next call was very official from the bank. Now question time, how many of you know that the first four numbers on a credit card is the same for everybody? Shut up you smarties. This member of the Peter Sellers Memorial Call Centre had a lot of my information and I realised later where she'd gotten it from and the scam went like this.Bank of Melbourne has been overcharging fees for some years and the department of consumer affairs had ordered refunds for customers. Gong number 1 should have gone off then as I've banked with St. George which has just merged with BofM so I shouldn't have been affected.They had my address plus post code. Asked if I did internet banking. Asked If I did phone banking and did I do it with mobile calls. Checked my birthdate which they had. Asked to check my bank card details or my credit card details. Okay getting edgy here and my bank account is linked to mother's and a lot of money there so went with credit card which has only debt.Before this, I was told that the consumer affairs person would ring today (Saturday) and when I pointed this out, she said they were working overtime on this problem. Gong 2, a government department working overtime to help a bank. I was given a password. I had to ask the consumer dept worker ant for their password so that it matched mine and I would know I was secure. Now comes the scam part. In order to have my refund I would have to pay a one off bank tax, if I had a refund of $4,000 then I would have to pay $400 and I could pay it at any post office then I would have the money.So stupidly and knowing it was stupid as soon as the numbers were out of my mouth, I gave them the credit card numbers and the CVV number on the back. Bingo, they had what they wanted, credit card fraud was out of the starting blocks.

As soon as I hung up, I rang Bank of Melbourne, cancelled the card and had a watch put on all accounts. The girl was good, she'd had so many calls this week about this particular scam that she knew all the details, made sure my last transaction was mine then cancelled everything. I felt such an idiot but she said it wasn't only old people (me?) that were being caught this time, the younger ones were as well and they were giving out mobile numbers so at least I hadn't done that. I don't give my mobile number to anyone except the nursing home. She also asked if any official mail had gone missing but everything like bank statements and centrelink (more about them later) are filed straight after I review the credit card statement. I mean I'm so paranoid about identity theft that I take my name and address off every parcel I receive from overseas before it goes in the recycle bin. I will have a new credit card sometime next week. And I rang the nursing home to make sure that none of the residents did their own banking and the assistant DoN said her card had been hacked to the tune of $81,000 in America and this was while she was on the phone with the bank who were checking an item for $60.

Late in the afternoon while I was still wrangling blogger, another phone call comes in.Not Mrs....... but my first name and last name together. This is a call from Centrelink regarding my pension from another member of the PSMCC. She was told (crudity coming up) to shove her scam up her twat and don't ring again. Surprisingly she hung up.

And about Centrelink who now are pushing for not sending out pension statements but want everyone to see their details online. After today I want everything in writing which I need to have as Power of Att. for mother. So I'll be stomping up to centrelink on Monday to get her bank balance adjusted and told I don't have online access. Not only do they want me to go online for details but print it out as well. With all this going on, I'm not surprised I was ripe for scamming. I forgot, the details for the bank scam, remember the centrelink scam from a few weeks back, yep all those details were enough to start off the bank one.

Bank A/C's are a constant source of worry, never know when thieves will strike. So far so good, been with St George since their beginnings, usually very helpful.I dont think it has any connection to my being English... St George Patron Saint 23-4.

Bloody scammers! They get sneakier by the day. I'd be mighty suspicious if I had banks trying to refund anything and on a Saturday too!! Ditto Centrelink, they don't call on Saturdays. Luckily, my account doesn't charge fees except 60 cents here and there if I go over the allotted free eftpos limit for the month.I'm so glad you rang the bank and cancelled everything.and well done on getting back into blogger dashboard via the back door. You're almost a hacker!

Don't have connections with Centrelink, Vet Affairs - Yes. Most if not all of their operatives have Sub continent accents. I being slightly deaf among other things become impatient and it all boils down to me saying "Send me a letter".

EC, they know my address and phone number and that I use a passport for ID so I'm locking all doors and windows even if I'm only walking to the shop.

Vest, I've been with St.George and never had a problem either and that's why the dingdong should have rung. Westpac have only just merged with St.George so any problems wouldn't have affected my accounts.

Kath, now that's a word to have labelled on my phone to remind me. I've felt like such a fool but at least I didn't give them my mobile number but that's just because I can never remember it.

River, I'm getting so many of these calls and I keep the landline for mum to ring and I don't like mobile phones.The give away for these scams is to not talk for a minute or drop the phone and the other end demands to know what did you do with the phone. Funny how bits are coming back to me from both scams but this is them checking I don't have a trace.

Andrew, centrelink does call some times but it was mostly when I was changing over mum's accounts and the house was being sold and I was going between dept. of ageing and centrelink. Now they want to do everything on the internet, not likely.Actually I had one caller selling me something and I hung up, she rang back and demanded to know why I had hung up, there were a lot of four letter words in my answer.

Vest, everyone has said the same thing, send a letter which they can't do. That was another thing which made me think it might be legit. The banks are using Mumbai citzens to man the call centres and getting the Aus bank workers to train them. It was all set up to grab the gullible.

I had some debt collection company chasing me for a $64 Telstra bill that I had disputed months earlier - but first they said, "we need to confirm your details, can you please tell me your name date of birth and address?"...i refused, "no sorry I dont have a clue who you are and i'm not handing out my personal information" that led to few moments of silence at the other end "but we cant discuss this matter with you unless you confirm your personal details" "well then sweetheart i guess we arnt discussing it then are we?" (insert gotcha! grin at my end here)its a new age, dont put your personal info up on the web (Facebook), dont give your personal info to strangers on the phone - I tell my kids, if you wouldnt walk up to sombody in the street and tell them this stuff then dont put it on the web

Hi. I've found out the acoustics in the car park of my biographical subject's flats are excellent. I sang Black and Blue (Chain) and a little birdie who drove down from Darwin and bought a flat on the second floor looked very impressed. Or appalled, I'm not sure.

"IE is refusing to load any blogger page at the moment "because IE is the crappiest browser.Opera is actually the best according to PC Mag survey, but Chrome is a good second.I am loathing the 2-word verification

I sent you an email regarding the non show bloggy bit, I should have twigged earlier but ya know, I keep having to rescue the youngest cat who thinks it's now fun to abseil down the oven fan exhaust. Well, until she falls through into a pan of scrambled eggs!

Oh and for anyone else, here is the info from google themselves, if they are also not able to see some blogs as the dns [propagation] redirection takes up to 24 hours. and maybe there are glitches as well. http://support.google.com/blogger/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2402711

Nothing like having the hard copies for everything...i still use cheques and only credit card when no alternative - You would remember a time when none of this happened - I know we didn't have blogs and the net ion those days...but somehow amongst the boredom I recall a delicious feeling of time stately moving at a pace I could deal with

Well pardon me, grey afternoon turns the mind to philosophy. Life is a toss of the coin, I say, when you're in a cocoon you can't see out of it. There's my sister and me, same genes, different attitudes. Different upbringings. She was adopted, raised as a bourgeois, does all the bourgeois things. It's a foreign life, I'll never get the hang of it: muffins, chatter, respect for authority.

Respect for the law. Yes.Well it holds in its farts when she's around.

Deb, I think the trouble is that Google is trying to be the new Facebook and if I wanted to be on Facebook I would be.I prefer blogger.

Great way to get rid of scammers, tell them you have all the time in the world to listen because you have to record all calls for the police. That gets them.

Stacks, I have no verification now and couldn't get emails to load last night.

Antikva, didn't get the email until tonight and I'm glad you explained everything, could you do it again in English?

Midldlechild, I can live without the Facebook and twitters but not when I want to research something. No more dragging huge books home from the library. I was hesitant about internet banking but it's great for keeping check on mum's accounts and moving money around when she's out of it again.

Robbert, singing to yourself is a way of getting encores, probably the only way. March already, Grand Prix and running up to Easter then winter, life's a giddy whirl these days.

I sing very loud here, and the school teacher in the next house has never asked for an encore. Meanwhile she's thrown lots of objects at my place, including a vase I saw her buying at K Mart. And one night as Murderess her psychiatrist and myself were reaching a high note she tossed a dead pot plant onto my veranda. So you're probably right.

Life's a giddy whirl, right again, and I dream it instead of living it. And it's hard to duck the dreams because the dreams are so beautiful. I have to wake up, think hard about my mother. What a job. I've told myself this winter is my last chance. I'm probably right.

glad to hear you came out the other side. it must be a passing of the years or everything s[eeding up, but life is so damn complicated!!! yes, three exclamation marks complicated. and this two word wv is the pitzzz

Jayne, it's been a crappy year so far, I'm hoping for better. And I am so sick of people ringing but the police taping story is giving me loads of fun.

Phil, the years are definitely speeding up, adults always said it would when I was young. It seems I don't have any verification now but I might go to pop-up comments since this post a comment on a wide screen is way over to the right side.

Robbert, "The turds of blogging"? Have you been stirring the can again? Comments have been lost but then I lost a whole blog.Dance the Watusi, I could fall apart or kill someone doing that. I remember it was very vigorous and these days I'm more waltz like.

I fell out of bed last night. I'm lucky I didn't bang my head on the floorboards. I climbed back and went to sleep again. And indeed, if it weren't for the graze on my wrist I might wonder if I dreamt it.

Well there was a big grey van, looking like it was thin metal but if you tried to cut your way out you found it was thick. It lumbered around to suburban police stations, picking up customers from the cells and delivering them to Pentridge. I got on it at Malvern, just a few minutes after a fat detective said,”You’re going out to Pentridge now, think about the bullshit you’ve told us….And think about that!” He hit both sides of my head at once. Seems he’d wanted to clap his hands together but my head got in the way.

I was marched out to the van, put in through the side door, and it clanged shut. Through the gloom I saw about a dozen other customers, sitting on metal benches down either side. Up the front there was a locked compartment for transporting female prisoners separately. I didn’t know that at the time, so wasn’t surprised to see a woman seated among us. She was middle-aged, red haired, wearing a dress and a turban.

Being the youngest there, a teenager, no one took any notice of me, I was able to sit back and listen to all the complaints. The best headshaking came for a bloke who was in for not paying maintenance: the biggest bum rap of all time.

The tour continued. At Brunswick an old pisspot climbed in and was greeted uproariously. Pisspots is what most of them seemed to be; pisspots and thieves.

In the end the van stopped, it sounded its horn. We'd arrived. I knew it for sure when someone sang out, “Here we are, the college of knowledge.“

The van moved forward, stopped again, the door was opened and we all got out. We were inside Pentridge.

Guards herded us into a bluestone room, concrete floor, wooden benches around the walls. One end had a toilet pan with a tap beside it. After a while we were ushered through the showers, returning to the room looking damp but not glowing. Then a large container of black tea and metal cups were carried in. A guard appeared carrying a bottle of plonk. He yelled someone’s name and a bloke leapt to his feet. “This yours?” said the guard. “Yes…yes…Oh don’t do that!- don’t do that!” The guard pulled out the cork and poured the plonk down the dunny.

After that there was a shout: “Short arm inspection.“ I had no idea what it meant but the old lags did and lined up in three rows. Two guards came in, with them was an old fellow who looked like a professor but was probably a doctor. My fellow customers, had opened their pants and flopped out their doodles. I was gobsmacked. The trio strolled along inspecting each doodle. The woman I’d seen in the van was the last they came to and she put up a fight. The guards grappled with her. “Come on Daisy!” In the end they pinned her arms, got her dress up -and God Almighty!- “she” had a doodle!

Well darlings I’d arrived at a strange place, a strange interval in my life. Nothing would ever be more real.

-The RH Temple of Extreme Thought.Open all day, open all night.We never close.

Later I saw that bloke who’d been in women’s clothes. He had a bald head, ginger hair around the sides; with the turban you wouldn’t know. They’d put him in prison garb and it had a good effect on him. He looked sensible, circumspect, accepting of his doodle.

Pentridge my old sweetie, all the things you were. The things I had to do, splitting match sticks to make two from one, rolling a smoke using newspaper (flared up with each drag), hurling my pillow at the cell roof all night to kill mosquitoes, pinching a radio earphone from another cell after mine was knocked off; and from our dinner, at four in the afternoon, filling my bread roll with soggy meat, taking it up to my cell for later in the night, placing it on my little table, staring at it for about ten minutes, then eating it.

I soon felt at home. It didn’t take long. Previous abodes were never much anyway. I loved the porridge, looked forward to it, but ate my powdered milk the moment I got it. That was very silly, a whole day’s ration gone, nothing left for my porridge or tea. But I didn’t have a metal cup to mix it anyway, and never asked for one. RH, dumb like that.

Funny, but being shut away from the world is how you learn about it. I became a thinker. Lying on my bunk, locked door at my elbow, toilet bowl in the corner, I reflected that we all had the same, no one better off.

Except there was C Division, the “old stockade”, crumbling away in a dusty yard. A cell block with no electricity, no plumbing, every evening you got a stub of candle and a bucket to shit in. They installed me there on my last night; a final lesson to young blokes. It didn’t work. Everyone, warders included, saw it as a joke.

The best thing was one afternoon when a theatre group came. They put on a little play, a comedy. And more than the show, it was the artistry, the actors themselves, that shook me. There was a wider world, I’d no idea. I’d got a look at it; the other side.

I was shown to my little cell. The door banged shut. I sat there looking at it. It dawned on me then that all this was no laughing matter. Golly, shutting me away was pretty ridiculous, surely? I didn’t take it well. No, not at all.

High up on the opposite wall from the door were two thick panes of opaque glass. There was a gap between them and then there were bars. Below that in the right hand corner there was a toilet bowl, the top tastefully covered with calico, a sort of dunny cosy. Opposite the bunk there was a little table and a chair. On the floor beside the bed was a strip of something like woven grass. The first thing I’d noticed after the door slammed shut was a squawking noise. Beside me on the bunk I found a dark earphone, a cord from it plugged into the wall, and there was a little switch there giving a choice of two radio stations: the ABC or radio Pentridge: jail gossip, song requests and who’s getting released tomorrow… William John O’Meally (totally innocent, sentenced to death but reprieved) was the disk jockey. His own favourite song was Begin the Beguine (old thing, frightfully depressing). He played it a lot.

Well darlings I was shattered. Which explains my love, my present nostalgia, for this monstrous place. It was hard. Fearsome. Challenging.

“And yet dauntless the slug horn to my lips I set, And blew. ‘Childe Roland to the Dark Tower came.”*

And then you find out it didn’t eat you. It scared you, but didn’t eat you.

D Division. We were locked in our cells from 4pm until 7:30 next morning. My cell was on the second tier. Walking up the steel stairs gave me a wide view through some large windows. Beyond the walls there were houses, dozens of them, all sparkling in sunlight, it seemed a ridiculous time to be going to my cell. Eventually I got my ration, two one-ounce packets of Greys Tobacco (‘Greys is Great’), Two packets of TALLY-HO cigarette papers (‘It’s easier with cut corners’) and a box of matches (‘Redheads’). There were never enough matches so I learnt to split one match into two with a razor blade, some lags could split one match into four. Always in the few minutes before lock up time there was a frantic running around to bum cigarette papers, matches, tobacco as well. You always kept your butts. One day a bloke got bail and tossed all his butts into the yard where the hard up swooped on them like seagulls.

There was a Hills Hoist in the centre of the yard. I figured out meal times by studying its shadow across the concrete. I was always hungry, waiting for meals. You were given a weekly ration of either tobacco or chocolate. Some had both, through trading. They got visits, these toffs, and tobacco brought in. Some poor buggers even sold their food to them, like an occasional dessert, or a piece of cake. This well-off gang kept to themselves, had their own corner, were never challenged.

I was befriended by a bloke who looked a genuine toff, great mop of curly hair parted at the side and a posh accent. It seems he’d decided to choose just one person to socialize with. I hadn’t yet received my tobacco ration and he had plenty of the stuff, every time he rolled a smoke he offered me one as well. He was from Mount Eliza he said, and talked about his girlfriend Susan, and about roaring around the seaside hills there in his sports car. It all sounded like crap. But he talked and I listened. Then one day he reached for his tobacco and it wasn’t there. To my astonishment he went straight to the corner where the gang had all their chattels, lifted a towel, found his tobacco, then came back. And no one moved, said a word.

They’d picked his pocket. How he knew I’ve no idea. I’d no idea about him at all. Whoever he really was, whatever he was. it was greater than me.

All this is nothing to me, it's an embarrassment, that's all; I can delete it. There's no one, nothing, not judges, professors, psychiatrists, bow-tied surgeons dining in five star restaurants, can perform! ACT! PUT ON A SHOW! The bums. They are bums, no-talent bums. I sang in my cell at night, the start of a lifetime hobby: singing to myself. I heard the drums, the music. Then there was a crazy called Truscott, he yelled in the yard one morning, soon as he came out "Who's that bastard singing all night I'll fucken strangle him!" I sang quieter, groove, I got in the groove, Bobby Darren numbers: swing. You can do that, your heart still in it.

The day before your release you could wash your clothes. the gear you were wearing when you came in. I went up with another bloke, a warder gave us our clothes. On the way to the laundry we saw O'Meally. The bloke with me yelled, "Hey Bill, how about some more rock and roll?" O'Meally grinned at a warder, repeated it to him. First song that night was Begin the Beguine, just in case there was doubt.

We marched from our cells to the mess room, from the mess room to the oval, loudspeakers broadcasting band music, military tunes. The entire place was run on Naval discipline, probably going back to the Rum Corps. A warder would send you on an errand and you'd start off, then he might yell "Double!" and you had to run.

They weren't all bad, a German warder who led us in exercises on the oval roared with laughter at our efforts. He gave us a speech, jail food was no good he said, we needed to exercise for our health. He directed us in piggy back battles, the ones being carried clutching at each other, trying to pull each pair down until no one was left. Just for a lark he ordered a great hefty bloke to get on the back of another who was just a skeleton. It took a lot of tries, and succeeded, just for a moment, it was like the skinny bloke took time to realise what had happened, then collapsed.

The warder in charge of our division (Young Offenders Group) looked like a bank clerk. He was a shock. One day he was sitting around with us chuckling over how he used to pedal twenty kilometres to visit his girlfriend, later that same day he was swinging someone around the yard screaming at him. Two blokes hated one warder so much that when they were released they stole his car and mailed it back to him, bit by bit. Slowly he received the steering wheel, air cleaner, healights, and lots more. They sold the wheels.

Eight o'clock one morning and they let me out a side door, the servants exit. I was free, and wearing a pair of their woollen socks. I went across to the pub and bought a packet of smokes, just like any normal citizen, but the barman looked at me funny, he'd seen too many others do the same.

I sat on Coburg station and waited for the train. It arrived and I got into a carriage of half a dozen people. I took a sly look at them, how about if they knew half an hour ago I'd been a lodger in their bluestone college? A terrible awful place they'd only seen from the outside? Life is a very funny thing, hilarious or it couldn't manage.

I'd been given some money by Prisoner's Aid, and a little book of blue meal tickets for a cafe in Russell Street. Eventually I decided to try it out, this café, and went there for lunch. It was a small shop, grubby, and run by a sad looking Greek. He took my ticket and I sat down to see what pleasure awaited me. When it arrived I didn't know what it was. The Greek was delighted anyway when I told him it was a step up from Pentridge. I didn't really mean it.

He had a few other customers as well, adding to the gloom of the place: bearded hobos looking like prophets from the Old Testament. I left, deciding not to go there again, but did, just once. Really, it was awful. Depressing. I wondered what he was cooking up there, maybe pet animals.

I’d planned to spend the night at Ozanam, a cheap flophouse in Exhibition Street, but there were too many fights there, to many head cases. In the end, after two movies and a stroll by the Yarra, ect, I went to the Gill Memorial Shelter for Homeless Men, right in the city. I arrived rather late, an old codger sold me a bed ticket and led me upstairs. I was shown into a dorm of forty snoring men, some with wet towels over their heads. As I was getting undressed a bloke in the next bed gave me some advice. “It’s first up best dressed here young fella. Put what you want to keep under the pillow.”

When I’d settled in he started up talking, just like my old pal at Pentridge. He went on and on, tales of cattle duffing up in the ranges, sawmills, bushfires, but mainly cattle duffing. I fell asleep and he was still at it. Very early next morning I awoke to music from speakers on the walls, and it was lovely, pastoral, made you think meadows, glens. And then the coughing began. And what coughing! HACK! HACK! HACK! Finishing off with HEEYAGGHHH!!! and beginning again. Through it all in continued this sweet Arcadian music; a symphony for strangulation.

Downstairs we got a meal at long tables, just like in the Pen. My fellow diners were gross, elbows dug me both sides. Well you couldn’t blame them, there was nothing left, animals in paddocks were better off.

Over by the door, bonnet strapped to her granite head, a Salvo woman glared at us; not one would make it to Paradise.

I hung around outside a while, smoking with my fellow lodgers. I dropped my butt on the ground and someone pounced on it, just like in the remand yard.

Well I had to get on. I gave my little book of meal tickets to an old coot, keeping one ticket from it, just in case. Then I got moving, quit their company, still young enough to walk away. Young. Optimistic. Trusting if you don’t mind.

The Remand yard had two or three concrete benches, right against the walls. Simms and Harris, decent types, sat polishing their shoes all day, rub rub rub, spitting on the leather from time to time. Others often joined in, doing the same.

Simms and Harris were from South Melbourne, quite a slum in those days: broken footpaths, little wooden houses where women had too many kids and men weren’t paid enough to keep them. It was all bread and milk breakfasts, cheap evening meals, an entire neighbourhood smelling of stew and stale piss.

Simms and Harris patrolled the streets, shoes all polished, every penny gone on clothes. They pinched cars, smashed shop windows with crowbars, grabbed what they could. Cops sped after them but Simms was an ace driver. He told me what to do, let the cops almost overtake you, then swerve left into a side street while they keep going. He had enough break on them one night to swing into an open driveway, shut the gates, and hide till they’d gone.

Simms and Harris were nice looking kids, sharp-witted and all. South Melbourne wouldn’t know these days. It’s different education. The rich living there now believe in reform. The rich have always believed in reform. But necessity grips hard, reform was the furtherest thing.